ex-Betrayal drummer arrested for child pornography

Tony Ramirez, drummer of California hardcore band Betrayal, was arrested on July 25 in Vancouver, WA on suspicion of both possessing and dealing child pornography.

Ramirez, age 22, was arraigned on August 8th on a handful of charges, including two counts of first-degree dealing of images depicting a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct.

Ramirez, who moved to Vancouver from Lake Elsinore, CA roughly nine months ago, reportedly uploaded three sexually explicity images of minor girls (ages 6-12) to servers at Google. The company reported the matter to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, who ultimately passed on the information to police.

Our research indicates that following his arrest, Ramirez was jailed in Vancouver and his next hearing is scheduled at Clark County Superior Court in October.

UPDATE: Now that the cat is out of the bag, Betrayal has issued a statement:

"We just wanted to address everything going on with Tony. First, I want to say how shocked and disappointed we are about the allegations in the news regarding him. This is something that we would have never expected to hear about him. With that being said, Tony has not been a member of Betrayal for over two years. He had some unfortunate events happen in his life that did not allow him to commit full time and be a member of this band. If you follow us, you would notice that Tony hasn't been in our promo pictures or on tour with us in quite some time. We sincerely hope these alegations prove to be false, but regardless, this is something that we do not take lightly and something that shouldn't be reflected upon Betrayal."

For the record, we did not originally refer to Ramirez as an "ex" member for several reasons: Ramirez listed himself as Betrayal's drummer on Facebook; the band has not provided any current roster or lineup updates for quite some time (something we requested several weeks ago); and Ramirez referred to Betrayal as "my band" as recently as several months ago.